Tale of a Legend
by PlayISDF
Summary: A look at Minato and some of the things he did. -- One-shot.


**A/N:** _Soooo, I've been typing this for the last couple of hours. Needed to express myself and get my mind off some things (the last 48 hours have been horrible). This is a one-shot about Minato and some of the things he did. It shouldn't conflict with the canon. Anyway, enjoy._

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_**Tale of a Legend**_

"Do you know the tale of Minato Namikaze, the Fourth Hokage, and the jutsu he created, young Naruto?" an old man wearing white with bits of red on his clothing asked the young boy with goggles on his forehead and whisker like hair on his cheeks.

"He was the guy who saved the village from the Nine-Tailed Fox right? Everybody knows that!" the young boy replied as he looked at the Third Hokage with his big blue eyes wide open and full of wonder.

"That's right, but that isn't the only thing he did! Tell me Naruto, what do you see as you look out upon the village from here?" It was a sunny day as the two stood atop of the mountain with the great Hokage's faces upon it that overlooked the entire village.

"Um, I see the village and everybody in it living their lives peacefully?" the boy replied, sounding a little hesitant about the question. He hadn't been at the academy for very long and wasn't sure about the answers to such questions.

"Very good Naruto!" the Hokage replied as he looked at Naruto with a smile. "_It's nice to see that despite his age, he was able to get to the heart of the question,_" he thought to himself. "Yes you are correct, the villagers are able to live peacefully within the village, and one person highly responsible for this is the Fourth Hokage, let me tell you a bit of his tale Naruto and maybe you'll understand why he is one of the most revered shinobi in the history of the Leaf Village."

The Third Hokage stopped looking at Naruto and began looking back out to the village, and started to remember and tell the young boy the tale of a legend.

"Minato was considered to be the genius of his generation, he entered the academy at a young age and was able to excel at an exceptional rate and graduate from the academy at the age of only 10."

"Woah! That is amazing!" interrupted Naruto, his face radiating amazement.

The Hokage chuckled, "Yes that is amazing isn't it? But let me finish first okay Naruto?" The boy just nodded, eager to hear the rest of the Fourth's tale.

"After he graduated, he became part of a squad under the tutelage of one of my own students, the legendary Sannin, Jiraiya! Learning from him, his skills increased at an amazing rate, and he created some of his greatest jutsu from some of the missions he went on."

"Really, really!? Like what!?" the young boy asked loudly, full of excitement from the possibility of hearing about real missions.

"Like the time when he was in the Land of Mountains, where he was split up from his team who got captured and he had to save them by himself."

"That sounds so cool! I wanna hear about it!" Naruto shouted out.

"Okay, okay Naruto! I'll tell you," the Hokage replied, smiling the whole time, happy that the boy was taking such an interest. "As I said his team had been captured, they were deep within a cave all tied up and Minato had a lot of foes to go through and nothing but chakra to use to get through them."

"So how did he do it?" Naruto asked.

"He used a plan! He had learned a little about manipulating shadows from the Nara clan as he was friends with Shikamaru's father.'

"Shikamaru? You mean that lazy kid?" Naruto asked, surprised that Shikamaru's family would actually be willing to do something.

"Yes Naruto, that's the one, as I was saying he had learned a bit about manipulating shadows and he used it to scare the people inside the cave by having the shadows move along the wall, through this he was able to get everyone into a tight group and was able to sneak up on them and proceeded to use what would be referred to as "Combo Release: Exploding Shrapnel!"

"Wait wait wait," Naruto interrupted. "I know that there is different types of jutsu but what is 'Combo Release'?" asked the boy.

"A very good question! As you said there is different types of jutsu, such as Fire and Earth right? What do you think 'Combo Release' would mean?" the Hokage asked back, seeing if Naruto could figure it out.

"Um, when you stick the two together?" he replied.

"Exactly Naruto! That's completely correct! The first thing he did was create hollow shells of rock with the Earth jutsu and then used his Fire jutsu to heat and compress the air inside the shells, when they reached a critical point, they would explode with hot rocks flying everywhere rapidly, this is how it got the name 'Exploding Shrapnel', do you understand Naruto?"

"I guess so," replied the boy.

"As they exploded, it was hard to avoid getting hit and as such, Minato was able to take out 10 powerful chuunin and 3 jounin."

"Woah, that many!?" exclaimed the boy.

"Indeed, to create a jutsu like that on the spot, and take out 13 powerful enemies and rescue his team by himself is indeed incredible!" replied the Hokage, himself feeling amazed at the ingenuity of what Minato had done.

"What else did the Fourth do?" asked Naruto.

"He created a powerful jutsu called Rasengan! And used it to save a fleet of trade boats from a tornado!"

"Wow! How'd he do it, how'd he do it!?" hounded Naruto.

"He had been trying to create a new technique for three years which took what we call 'Shape Manipulation' to the highest level it could be, it was a very ambitious endeavor that manipulated chakra into a ball in the palm of your hand that spun around wildly in all directions!"

"Wait, three years? Is it that hard?"

"It is, it's an A-rank jutsu."

"Wow, can I learn it?"

The Hokage laughed, pleased that Naruto high ambitions as well, just like Minato. "Perhaps one day Naruto you will be able to master it."

"So how did he save the boats?" Naruto asked getting them back on track.

"Well as I said, Rasengan was something he had been working on for three years, on the day of the tornado, he completed it! The tornado neared the boats and it seemed that nothing could be done, Minato, unable to sit back and let the fleet get destroyed dived underwater and moved underneath the tornado where he began to make a Rasengan but spun it in the opposite direction to the tornado." The Hokage closed his eyes and smiled as he thought about the heroics of Minato.

"He pumped just about all the chakra he had into it and tried to keep it going as long as possible, water around him was spinning in the opposite direction to the Tornado so it was slowing down, but he needed to keep it going until it stopped completely." The Hokage opened his eyes and looked at Naruto again, the boy looking so intently on him.

"He was able to stop the tornado, plus when he was finished, he had finally completed the Rasengan!"

"Man, he could save lives and complete jutsu at the same time, no wonder the whole village thinks highly of him!" yelled Naruto.

"Indeed, but the most amazing jutsu he created was the 'Flying Thunder God' jutsu," the Hokage said proudly. "That jutsu saved many lives on numerous occasions, the first person he ended up saving with it was his future wife, as it turned out."

"Wow! It sounds so powerful!" Naruto commented, imagining the possibilities from the name.

"The technique itself isn't powerful as by itself it doesn't cause harm, but it's what you can do with it that makes it so powerful, it's also the same jutsu that earned him the nickname 'Konoha's Yellow Flash' in the Third Great Shinobi War."

"I really need to hear this then!" Naruto said, looking at the Hokage, giving him his complete attention.

Looking at him, the Hokage opened his mouth and began to tell of the next jutsu of the Fourth's. "Kushina, the person who became Minato's wife, lived in the former Land of the Whirlpool country-"

"Land of the Whirlpool?" Naruto interrupted.

"Yes, it was an island country that had an unusual whirlpool in the middle of it." replied the Hokage.

"Really? How was it unusual?" Naruto asked, confused.

"I'm getting to that Naruto, the whirlpool itself was huge! That's not the unusual bit though, the strangest thing was that it was created and powered by chakra, with nobody helping it."

"How is that unusual old man?"

"Well, when you do a jutsu like a fireball jutsu, you need to put a constant stream of chakra into it, or it will failure." The Hokage waited for a few moments half expecting Naruto to interrupt again but he didn't say anything. Surprised, he continued to explain.

"There are other jutsu like shadow clones where a certain amount of chakra goes into them when they are created, but after they exhaust their chakra, they disappear, you understand this right Naruto?"

"Yeah yeah, jutsu either needs a constant amount of chakra being put into it, or just a one time amount that will eventually exhaust which will end a jutsu, right?" the boy replied.

"That's right! Good Naruto, good!" Naruto put on a big grin, happy he understood it. "As I said, the odd thing about this whirlpool is that it never ended and nobody was putting chakra into it which is how the island got it's name," the Hokage continued.

"Weird, so what about Minato?"

"Well Minato was stationed there for diplomatic reasons when he met Kushina, apparently a man was trying to get her to marry him since she was the daughter of the feudal lord and Minato was nearby at the time, and became somewhat annoyed as he overheard the conversation, he interrupted when the man wouldn't take no for an answer."

"Ooooh, then what happened?"

"I'm getting there Naruto, when the man was about to grab her, Minato was about to stop him when Kushina casted a genjutsu on the man! She made him walk out of the building, Minato was rather surprised that she knew genjutsu actually," the Hokage replied, a smirk on his face like the one he had the first time he read the report from Minato so long ago.

"Is that unusual?" asked Naruto.

"Typically daughters of feudal lords don't learn anything about being a ninja and instead hire them to do their bidding."

"So why did she learn to be a ninja?"

"She had a natural talent for it, like Minato." the Hokage admitted.

"So what happened then?"

"Well the two got closer to each other while the man made repeated attempts to get her to marry him, eventually though, he snap and lost his mind."

"How did that happen?" Naruto asked with a little less enthusiasm from hearing that the man lost his mind.

"From what was happening to him, he seemed to have some odd jutsu on him that gave him a lot of chakra and power, but made slip deeper and deeper into madness, oddly enough it also left a mark on his neck, like a curse, I guess the constant rejection finally sent him overboard." He paused, a little hesitant as he thought back on the man. "_I still wonder if you had anything to do with that odd curse mark, Orochimaru._"

"Old man?"

The Hokage snapped out of his thought as he heard Naruto's voice. "Sorry Naruto, I was just lost in thought there, anyway, one day Kushina was sitting up on a small cliff above a nearby pier, with Minato sitting on the pier as he was trying to see if he could seal away his chakra in a scroll that had the markings on it for a summoning jutsu, in hopes that he could carry these into battle and activate them to summon different things without having to wear himself out during a battle."

"Summoning jutsu?"

"A jutsu that summons different beings to the battlefield to help you out, toads, slugs, snakes, that kind of thing."

"Sounds like a cool jutsu, if only it had foxes or something!"

The Third hesitated a little from hearing this, but pressed on. "That would be cool wouldn't it? Theoretically, all he would have to do is put a little bit of blood on the scroll then activate it and he could summon different things!" Naruto looked rather impressed from the thought.

"At the same time the crazy man somehow put an enormous amount of chakra into the whirlpool, most likely via his curse, which in turn made the whirlpool grow by incredible amounts! The whirlpool began to destroy the entire island country, and it could be felt through the ground."

"Wow, to destroy an entire island, that's crazy!" yelled Naruto.

"Yes it is," replied the Third. "The tremors caused a small ridge near Kushina to collapse, and she had rocks rolling towards her, she wasn't aware of this until it was too late to move, but Minato saw it, unfortunately he didn't have enough time to get even close, when suddenly his scroll got caught by the wind and landed behind Kushina, and he himself got summoned there!"

"That seems so cool!" said Naruto in awe.

"It is, by then he was able to move fast enough and get her out of danger, but it was too late to do anything for the island so the whirlpool inhabitants that survived came here and Minato and Kushina ended up getting married."

"That's such a nice story," commented Naruto, with happy tears almost in his eyes.

"Indeed, after the incident, he made Jounin without even having to take the test, it was so apparent that he had the skills for it."

Naruto just nodded as he was speechless after hearing about Minato's missions.

"After that he got his own squad of genin and participated in the Third Great Shinobi War, by then he had perfected the Flying Thunder God jutsu and that earned him the name of the Yellow Flash."

"Why Yellow Flash though? Why not red or blue?" asked Naruto, curious as to why.

"Because when he used the jutsu, it looked like a yellow blur had just passed by and when he used it multiple times, it just looked like a yellow blur on the battlefield destroying the enemy, it was probably because of his yellow hair."

"The Fourth seemed to have some amazing jutsu!" replied Naruto, smiling.

"He created some of the most amazing jutsu the world has ever seen, actually he became so renowned that if the enemy saw him on the battlefield, they had orders to instantly run away, just by himself he could destroy an enemy force."

"I see what you meant about the jutsu itself not being strong but how it's used making it so strong!" yelled Naruto, in awe once more.

"Yes but there is the story of the final jutsu that saved our village, 'Sealing Jutsu: Reaper Death Seal'," the Hokage said, his voice containing a hint of sadness.

"Don't talk like that old man, I'm afraid of ghosts!" Naruto said as his knees were shaking. The Hokage put his hand on Naruto's head and smiled.

"You see Naruto, awhile after he succeeded me as the Fourth Hokage, the Nine Tailed Fox attacked the village, and as Hokage, he went out to stop the Nine Tailed Fox from destroying the village."

"That must have been really hard!" commented the boy, as he tried to imagine a fight against a giant demon fox.

"It was, no matter what he did he couldn't stop the Nine Tail so he did the only thing he could do to stop it, use _that _jutsu, 'Sealing Jutsu: Reaper Death Seal'," the Hokage told, his voice now even sadder.

"What did it do?" asked Naruto, a little worried by the name of the jutsu.

"I was just about to explain that Naruto, that jutsu is what stopped the fox, but it comes with a heavy cost, your own life."

"What!? Then why did he do it!?" shrilled Naruto.

"Because as Hokage, everyone in the village is your family, and you protect your family just like he did," the Hokage replied sternly.

"So what did the jutsu do?" Naruto asked, a little saddened.

"Sealed the fox away, Minato was unable to seal it in himself though and he didn't want to seal it in some random person, so he did something that he regretted immensely, he sealed it within his own son, his son that was born the same day the Fox attacked."

"That's incredible, but I never knew the Fourth had a son! Who is he?"

"One day you may find out Naruto, one day," the Hokage replied, somewhat sadly.

"Well it's decided! I'm going to be Hokage one day!" Naruto suddenly said, standing up straight, his head raised proudly, determination and resolve in his voice.

The Hokage froze as he just ran what Naruto said in his mind once more. "_I'm going to be Hokage one day!_" The Hokage stared at Naruto and thought to himself. "_This boy..._"

"I'm going to be better than the Fourth, I'm going to be the greatest Hokage! That is now my dream!" Naruto continued.

"_This boy...he might just do it!_" the Hokage finished, and then laughed. "_Yes, one day, this boy is going to be Hokage...the greatest Hokage of them all,_" he finished thinking, as the two continued to look out upon the village.

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**A/N:** _And there you have it! Didn't really plan anything out but I think it worked well. I think. Now I feel better, except for the fact it's 1:20am on a school night, the first day back to school too, last year as well. So I'm off to bed. Reviews would be appreciated!_


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